'Hi, it's me." That's Sofia Coppola calling from Paris, an appropriate place to talk about her film "Marie Antoinette," a visual feast that tells the ill-fated queen's tale from a "girl's point of view."

"I wanted to make an impressionistic portrait of her and not a biopic," says the new mother -- Coppola has a 2-month-old daughter, Romy.

"Marie Antoinette," out on DVD this week, is an interesting confection -- a sort of pop portrait of the queen, complete with contemporary songs and bright colors, with not a whole lot of dialogue.

Played winningly by Kirsten Dunst, Marie is not the mean-spirited royal she is often portrayed as, but somewhat of an uncomprehending innocent. Marie laughs when she hears it reported that she said, "Let them eat cake," calling the charge ridiculous, like a pop star dismissing a tabloid rumor.

"I always thought it was an interesting period of time. It was so bizarre that people were so cut off from reality -- an extreme decadent moment -- the last hurrah before the revolution," says Coppola, who also wrote the script.

As inspiration, she visited the real apartment of the ill-fated queen. "I saw the real fabrics that she chose. They were bright turquoise and pinks. Usually when you think of that period, you think of faded earth tones because that's what you see in a museum."

And Coppola wanted the film "to feel like it was happening now and not looking back in time and you're there," so she didn't want to give herself any rules. She added pop songs and made unusual casting choices for a period piece -- including "SNL" veteran Molly Shannon, British comic Steve Coogan and horror queen Asia Argento.

Coppola says she looked at a lot of paintings of the period, but "also photographers like Helmut Newton, just for his portrait of decadent European aristocrats."

The director, who hadn't "done in a interview in such a long time" because she's been "laying low, focusing on motherhood," sees a connection between the decadent life of the 18th-century French aristocrats and contemporary times.

"I think it's relevant to today's world, but I don't want to point out all the parallels."

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